This document outlines the knowledge, language and concepts that should be taught in physical education. It includes:
• A summary of the PE knowledge and principles that underpin our approach
• Long Term Sequence (curriculum map) for PE
• Progression of PE including alignment with the National Curriculum, substantive concepts, and as well as Tier 2 and Tier 3 vocabulary It is influenced by documents and research, including https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/research-review-series-pe/research-review-series-pe .
Our PE curriculum precisely follows the intended learning and ambition of the National Curriculum programme of study. It is our intention that through studying Physical Education pupils at Sandringham will have sufficient and well-designed opportunities to enjoy, succeed and excel in competitive sport and other physically demanding activities competently and confidently. We provide opportunities for pupils to gain confidence and resilience through a range of activities and sporting events. Children learn important life-long skills and attributes through our Physical Education programme such as independence, collaboration and respect for others. Interests and talents are encouraged, giving children a positive outlook on fitness and healthy living for their future life. We provide children with opportunities to compete in sport and other activities to build sportsmanship and teamwork.
PE contributes to our vision of excellence in the following ways:
• STRETCHING THE MIND : PE encourages children to be the best that they can be. This involves children to challenge themselves and think about ways that they can improve on their personal best. Children develop tactics, knowledge of rules and techniques, and think hard about how to apply these in contexts. They continually reflect on how they can improve and develop.
• ENRICHING THE IMAGINATION : Children are encouraged to develop their imagination and creativity through dance and movement lessons. They think of new ways of applying their learnt PE skills within games to outsmart their opponents.
• STRENGTHENING THE BODY : Through PE lessons, children are building their fitness levels, core strength and stamina. They are continually thinking of ways to improve their physical skills and fitness levels. Children are taught the importance of keeping healthy and can say what they need to do to keep their bodies safe during PE lessons and how to lead a healthy lifestyle.
• NOURISHING THE SPIRIT : We ensure that PE is accessible to everyone. It allows children time to release any negative thoughts, feelings and anxieties through physical activity. PE lessons are great for children’s mental health and well-being as it can be a way to clear a child’s mind. Physical activity has been proven to help with depression, anxiety and the pressures of life. Through trying hard, pupils develop resilience and learn perseverance by improving their PE skills.
• ENCOURAGING THE WILL TO DO GOOD : Across the school, physical activity and sponsored events are used to support charity work e.g. the Race for Life. Children are taught the importance of helping others for a good cause.
• OPENING THE HEART TO OTHERS : Through PE, the children meet lots of new PE coaches and sporting professionals. As well as having coaches in school, we also take our children to local sporting competitions with other schools. Here, the children meet other children in competitive surroundings, but we encourage children to be kind and to show honour and respect to their fellow team players.
We have deliberately built our PE curriculum around the principles of evidence-led practice. This is to ensure that pupils are equipped to successfully think, work and communicate like a sportsperson. Unapologetically ambitious, our PE curriculum focuses on excellence sporting fields and includes learning about successful sporting figures. Our intention is unmissable; exceptional teacher instruction inspires pupils to acquire knowledge, as sports stars, and enables them to skilfully attempt and apply their understanding. It is our intention that through studying Physical Education, pupils become more expert as they progress through the curriculum, accumulating, connecting and making sense of the rich knowledge. As a result, we have carefully prioritised the knowledge that will enable pupils to know more and do more in PE.
When designing our curriculum, we have considered knowledge in PE through several lenses: the disciplines that PE draws its knowledge from, along with declarative knowledge (knowing what) and procedural (knowing how) knowledge.
1. Substantive knowledge - this is the core subject knowledge and vocabulary used about the sporting disciplines and the contribution of sporting figures from a range of sports. We explore these through the lenses of substantive concepts which are taught through explicit vocabulary instruction as well as through the direct content and context of the study. The substantive concepts that we develop through our Physical Education curriculum are:
Invasion games | Net/wall games | Strike/field games | Target games | Gymnastics | Dance | Outdoor and adventurous activities | Athletics | Swimming
2. Disciplinary knowledge - PE draws on knowledge from a range of disciplines, including elite sport, physiology, psychology and sociology. For example, knowledge of how breathing rates increase during exercise has been established through scientific enquiry, whereas strategies to outwit an opponent in rugby have their disciplinary roots in elite sport. Physical Education therefore require that we teach pupils to competently and confidently apply the important contributions that each field makes to their participation in sport and physical activity.
3. Declarative knowledge – this is the factual knowledge concerning movement, rules, tactics, strategies, health and participation. It is explicitly linked to the content being taught. Pupils demonstrate their declarative knowledge through question-and-answer sections of a lesson or spoken or written observations of a practical demonstration. We provide pupils with the explicit vocabulary teaching and give them opportunities to verbalise their strengths and limitations, and to communicate ideas, decisions and choices they make during an activity they undertake or one that they observe.
4. Procedural knowledge – this can be viewed as the know-how to apply declarative facts, such as applying the tactics to a practice situation or modified game. This knowledge in a PE setting is best put into practice through physical demonstration or physical participation. For example, someone must have knowledge of what a headstand looks like and how to retain balance, before they start to practise doing one.
The latter two forms of knowledge, the ‘know-what’ and ‘know-how’, are vitally important in ensuring a pupil’s effective physically education. Pupils need to be explicitly taught what the links are between declarative and procedural knowledge. Without the declarative knowledge of motor movement, rules, strategies and tactics, and healthy participation, it might be that pupils can perform physically but they are not able to critically engage fully in the field of sport and physical activity, which could otherwise enrich their experiences. We have therefore carefully selection for systematic teaching both declarative and procedural knowledge.
When designing our curriculum, we build our knowledge around 3 conceptually distinctive but functionally connected pillars of progression which develop competence to participate and ensure that our PE curriculum can be realistically accountable for to meet the aims of the national curriculum:
• rules, strategies and tactics – knowledge of the conventions of participation in different sports and physical activities.
Pupils will be taught how to move intelligently as well as compentently through explicit teaching of the rules, strategies and tactics involved with different types of activities.
• motor competence – knowledge of the range of movements that become increasingly sport- and physical activity-specific.
As pupils develop through schools, they will be provided with the opportunity to make a range of physical actions which include co-ordinating fine and gross motor skills which are fundamental to participate in physical activities. Children who have greater prior knowledge will be taught how to develop their existing competences. Pupils will be provided with opportunities to improve their motor competence through the PE currciulum and during Play and Lunch time.
• healthy participation – knowledge of safe and effective participation.
At Sandringham, we realise that it is important that children make connections between their knowledge of health and how it applies to physical activity. This is provided through cross-curricular links in PSHE and Science. Developing this knowledge in these subjects allows pupils to make informed choices about their own participation outside of school.
PE is a vocabulary-rich subject. Besides the specific terminology, including for example muscle names or names of specific movements, there are some informal terms used that effectively ‘chunk’ together multiple and complex instructions or feedback. For example, when playing football, the word ‘line’ is often used to instruct someone to continue using the width of the playing area and pass the ball down the side line to a teammate. Pupils only know the meaning of terms like this and can attempt to respond as intended if they have been taught the specific language of the activity or sport. We therefore explicitly plan and teach vocabulary to enable this to happen. These include the precise names of rules, strategies and tactics, when pupils will first encounter and re-encounter key vocabulary and when and how complexity increases so that pupils have full access to particular physical activities and sports through development of a shared language for PE.
We implement our intent using Your PE for most aspects of PE. Your PE offers a comprehensive programme for Primary PE from Early Years to Year 6. Your PE considers PE to be much more than just the physical, and is created around the core basis of head, hand and heart. These domains of learning can be categorised as
• cognitive domain (head) – this includes the rules, strategies and tactics of different sports
• psychomotor domain (heart) – this includes the range of movements used in sports and physical activity
Through adopting a whole child approach, we place a focus on developing the whole child from foundation stage through the Year 6, and we allow pupils to grow, develop and excel in areas outside just the physical. The Your PE curriculum runs a progressive scheme, providing full PE coverage, with units covering key substantive concepts. This allows pupils to have a broad and enriched experience in their Physical Education curriculum, to create a positive relationship with physical activity to last long after they leave our schools. We use other external providers to support teacher development through co-delivery of PE lessons. Additional CPD is available through the Your PE portal. Swimming is implemented using an external provider to deliver extended lessons in Years 4 and 5.
We have deliberately chosen to focus on fewer sports/physical activities, taught in more depth, to enable more pupils to develop the competency required within the national curriculum. Our approach provides the depth of learning required for pupils to achieve success in a particular activity before moving on to the next. This reflects the role that competence can play in motivation and engagement.
We have sequenced our content based on how progression of knowledge builds over time, from simple to complex and through different sports and physical activities. The sequencing allows pupils to revisit and recall prior knowledge and vocabulary by requiring that they seek similarities and contrasts between the different contexts they are taught knowledge. For example, they are taught the importance of maintaining possession of the ball as an important strategy for success in an invasion game; when this content is taught in football, pupils also learn the importance of dribbling and passing and the important parts of the body to pass and receive the ball. While hockey involves different movements and rules and different strategies and tactics, pupils’ knowledge of the importance of maintaining possession that they learned in football can be developed and extended. Similarly, pupils are taught the similarities and contrasts between principles of training to improve their participation in different sports and physical activities. For example, pupils learn about the importance of muscular endurance in dance, but they develop a broader understanding of muscular endurance through swimming. They are also taught other desirable fitness components within each activity to provide a richer concept of what fitness means generally and what it looks like across a range of activities and sports. Through careful positioning of clear and specific examples, pupils develop their understanding and make the correct connections to their prior knowledge.
Lessons in the wider curriculum are typically split into six phases:
• CONNECT This provides an opportunity to connect the lesson to prior learning from a previous module or lesson. Teachers return children’s attention to the previous lesson’s intended learning/the big idea for the learning module, including key vocabulary. Retrieval practice allows all pupils to take time to remember things and activate their memories. Quizzing allows questions to be asked and allows pupils to carry out retrieval practice. Cumulative quizzing, allows for a few questions to be asked each lesson, which are built upon the previous lesson.
• EXPLAIN This is the explicit teaching that needs to take place. Teachers should ensure they are clear what they want children to know and remember. They plan for and explicitly address common misconceptions so they can address these in lessons as they arise. They should be clear about the substantive knowledge and the vocabulary that they want children to understand in the session. This can be developed using key information, facts, and images so that explanations are precise.
• EXAMPLE Providing pupils with high-quality examples is essential for learning. Pupils need to see worked examples. My turn, our turn, your turn is a technique that can be used to explicitly teach vocabulary and new concepts. Prepared examples should be carefully planned and need to be evident in teaching. An example in geography could be demonstrating how to label a map, before labelling a map together.
• ATTEMPT Guiding pupil practice allows pupils to rehearse, rephrase and elaborate their learning. Children need the chance to attempt and verbalise their understanding. Children’s own attempts are what help them to secure their understanding. Children need to have time to struggle and understand for themselves. This is not necessarily something that is recorded in books. This phase provides opportunities for teachers to check in with pupils to see who may need more challenge/support/scaffolds and if any misconceptions have arisen that need to be addressed. Extending the previous geography example, pupils could practice labelling a map.
• APPLY This is where pupils would typically begin to record in books. The number of scaffolds may vary.
• CHALLENGE Teachers get the children to interrogate their learning - summarise, explain, compare and contrast. Tools are built into routines to reduce overload and allow for hard thinking. These can be adapted for children based on their individual needs.
Specifically, within Your PE, lessons are organised into 4 main sections:
• WARM UP – pupils undertake a series of quick activities to warm up their bodies.
• STARTER – this supports learning in the main part of the lesson by practising similar movements.
• LEARN THE SKILL – this combines the CONNECT EXPLAIN EXAMPLE and ATTEMPT phases of our pedagogical approach to lessons with a series of activities.
• USE THE SKILL – this builds on the ATTEMPT phase of the lesson; it provides a context for the APPLY and CHALLENGE phases of our pedagogical approach.
Guidance for each part includes varied activities, explicit teaching points, and how to recognise if the activity has been successfully completed.
SEND Learners
We adapt the curriculum to meet children’s special educational needs and disabilities by:
· Identifying the CRITICAL CORE CONTENT that pupils with SEND need to know and use.
· CHUNKING knowledge/models into manageable sections.
· Teachers use structured RESPONSE FRAMEWORKS to promote hard thinking.
· Teachers use structured DELIBERATE PRACTICE to increase attention and retention.
· Pupils with SEND are entitled to think hard. We use structured CHALLENGE FRAMEWORKS to promote hard thinking, drawing on the content, including explain the word connections and sequenced thinking paths.
Careers and meaningful opportunities
At Sandringham Primary we provide career links and meaningful opportunities throughout each subject within the curriculum. Our learners benefit from: class discussions, visits from different professionals, visits, webinars and utilising our local expertise.
In order to identify the impact our curriculum is having on our pupils, we check the extent to which learning has become permanently embedded in children’s long-term memory in addition to looking for excellence in their outcomes. We use four main tools to quality assure the implementation and impact of our curriculum:
• Learning observations help to evaluate subject knowledge, explanations, expectations, opportunities to learn, pupil responses, participation and relationships.
• Professional growth models help to improve staff subject knowledge and evidence informed practice such as retrieval and spaced practice, interleaving and explicit instruction techniques.
• Assessment and achievement articulate the outcomes from tasks and tests, how well the content is understood and what the strengths and limitations are; it informs what to do next.
• Pupil Book Studies help to evaluate curriculum structures, teaching methods, pupil participation and response through a dialogic model.
When undertaking these we ask the following key questions:
• How well do pupils remember the content that they have been taught?
• Do examples of work and pupil discussions radiate excellence?
• Does learning ‘travel’ with pupils and can they deliberately reuse it in more sophisticated contexts?
Teachers employ a range of strategies both at and after the point of teaching to check the impact of their teaching on the permanence of pupils’ learning. These include: retrieval practice, vocabulary use and application, deliberate practice and rephrasing of taught content, cumulative quizzing within the learning sequence, summarising and explaining the learning question from the sequence, tests and quizzes. Teachers use information from tasks, tests, pupil book studies and other monitoring to support learning by responding to the gap between where pupils are and where they need to be. In lessons, they adapt explanations and examples to address misconceptions and provide additional practice or challenge where required. After lessons, they analyse pupils’ responses to identify shared and individual gaps in learning and misconceptions. Teachers then adjust subsequent planned teaching in response.
We use summative assessment is ‘to provide an accurate shared meaning without becoming the model for every classroom activity’ (Christodolou, 2017). If our curriculum is effective, it will lead to improvements in summative assessments over time. Teacher assessment judgements are against an agreed assessment model (the curriculum). We make summative judgements annually. Teachers record their formative assessments using the Your PE app. Annually, they record a summative judgement on OTrack.
Pupil book study is used as a method to quality assure our curriculum by talking to the children and looking in pupils’ books. We do this after content has been taught to see the extent to which pupils are knowing more, remembering more and able to do more. In preparation, we review the planned content, knowledge and vocabulary, so that conversations with pupils are meaningful and focused on what has been taught. When looking at books, we look at the content and knowledge, teaching sequence and vocabulary. We also consider pupils’ participation and consider the explanations and models used, the tasks the pupils are asked to do, the ability to answer carefully selected questions and retrieve information and the impact of written feedback. We ask careful questions that probe their knowledge, understanding and skills.
The Subject Leader undertakes a range of activities to understand what the curriculum looks like across the school and how well pupils know more, remember more and can do more as a result. In addition to the above tools, they use learning walks, planning reviews and book looks. They use their findings to support teachers to improve how they implement subjects and to make recommendations about the suitability of the intent for their subject. The Subject Leader formally reports on impact of the curriculum termly to the Curriculum Leader, Principal and Governors.
Progression Overview
Our EYFS curriculum is designed in lined with the new framework and development matters. The INTENT for our EYFS curriculum is to focus on developing gross and fine motor skills and develop our fundamental movement skills. These FMS, along with opportunities to develop a wider range of skills will prepare pupils for PE in KS1.
As pupils enter KS1, they will have opportunity to develop our fundamental movement skills. Throughout KS1, pupils will have opportunity to develop these skills and how to apply them into a context. Pupils develop knowledge, simple tactics and strategies for different games, and develop knowledge of techniques and sequencing to apply into gymnastics and dance type activities. By the end of KS1, we are aiming for children to have mastered core fundamental movement skills, and some additional skills.
In Years 3 and 4, pupils develop attacking skills through a range of sports and activities. These will be developed through small sided games (3v3, 4v4) and uneven games (3v1, 4v2). Pupils also develop relevant attacking and defending tactics and strategies which are transferable across similar games (invasion, net/wall, strike/field and target based). Pupils have the opportunity to develop communication, teamwork and leadership based skills through games and activities including outdoor and adventurous activities. In Gymnastics and Dance activities, pupils develop performance skills and display increasingly challenging sequencing. Pupils develop their knowledge of compositional ideas and start to combine the above skills to create sequences with partners. Skills are applied through relevant tasks in line with age expectations. Year 4 children will be begin to swim competently, confidently and proficiently and will develop self-rescue techniques.
